Health problems left SLO man living on the streets. A Salvation Army worker helped him
The U.S. health care system is the story of the haves and have nots.
The year 2020 has thrown the chasm into sharp relief.
Relatively well-paid workers with health insurance could often work from home after the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Poorly paid or underinsured workers often had little choice but to go to work — and if they got sick, staying home was not a viable economic option.
A 2019 study found that more than 66% of bankruptcies were because medical crises.
An earlier study from 1999 had the number pegged at a still horrible 40%.
Catastrophic medical issues are often related to financial troubles and homelessness. People who had, and could still have, fulfilling lives can be derailed by chronic pain and doctors’ bills they can’t pay.
Charities in San Luis Obispo County are struggling this year with rising demand for their services, and their usual fundraising gatherings have been canceled. Help out those groups by giving a donation if you can this holiday season.
Telegram-Tribune reporter Ann Fairbanks wrote a four-part series titled “Sick & Poor: Fighting the maze of health care.”
A year later, she checked in to see what had happened.
The first story was published Nov. 4, 1989, and the second on Nov. 26, 1990. The stories are excerpted for length.
Poor wander bureaucratic maze in search of health care
The constant pain often wakes him up, shooting from his diseased hips down his legs.
It’s worse when it’s cold — “it hurts like hell then.” And it’s especially bad when Anthony “Jack” Lucas has only a park bench or a friend’s car for shelter and spends his days hobbling about the streets on crutches.
For now at least—after a year of living on the streets — the San Luis Obispo native is able to rent a bed in a private house.
And arrangements have finally been made to get him the hip surgery he needs.
But it’s taken nearly a year of frustration, hassles, red tape, refusals and indignities to get to this point.
Why? Because the 55-year-old Lucas is poor.
After months and months of fighting bureaucratic red tape, computer foul-ups and Catch-22s, Lucas—with lots of help from a Salvation Army outreach worker — was finally declared officially disabled. With that declaration, he automatically became eligible for MediCal — a government program that helps pay for medical care for the poor.
Even with that, it took several months of doctor referrals before Lucas was finally able to at least get a surgery date.
“I’m glad something is finally happening,” said Toni Flynn, the Salvation Army outreach worker who’s spent the last year trying to get Lucas some financial and medical help.
“But it’s too bad it didn’t happen sooner.”
Lucas was not always poor.
After being discharged from the Navy in the mid-1950s he began diving for abalone.
“I did it for 12 years all along the coast,” he said, “until I got the bends and quit.”
He sold his diving business and bought a ski lodge outside Sonora, operating it for 12 years before moving to Antioch.
There he worked as a bartender until his father died, bringing Lucas back home to San Luis Obispo in 1980.
By the he was already suffering badly from what he calls “diver’s hip,” a progressive degeneration of the hip that can be caused by the water’s pressure on the circulatory system.
In 1982 his right hip was replaced.
The operation cost about $14,000, Lucas recalled, with his health insurance from his job as a dishwasher paying all but $3,000 of the bill.
“For about five years after that he remained pretty much unemployed or would do odd-jobs in exchange for room and board,” Flynn said. “He tried employment off and on from 1986 to 1988, but then he injured his back.
“Meanwhile the other hip had been deteriorating and he could no longer work at all. He lost his apartment and became homeless.
“He can’t walk without crutches and had to get around like that all day and night.”
In November 1988, Lucas wandered into the Salvation Army’s office in San Luis Obispo.
“He had no resources of any kind,” Flynn said. “He was staying at the emergency shelter, he had no income, he had lost communication with family and friends, he had nowhere to eat except at the soup kitchen.
“He was out there with nothing. And he didn’t know where to begin to get help.”
A licensed psychiatric technician, Flynn coordinates the Salvation Army’s homeless case management program.
“I thought it would be real simple,” Flynn said. “I would just make some calls and get things started.”
But she soon found out it wasn’t simple. She spent hours on the telephone to various agencies, helped him gather medical records and fill out pages and pages of forms, resubmitted lost forms, and amassed three fat file folders on his case.
Happy ending for SLO’s Jack Lucas
Jack Lucas was huddled around an open fire pit with fellow homeless folks when he first met Toni Flynn.
Out on the streets, crippled by two disintegrating hips, penniless and hopeless.
“When I met Jack, nothing was working — his body, his soul, nothing.
For about two years, Lucas lived on the street —sleeping on park benches or in a friend’s car, hobbling about town on crutches and suffering from constant pain.
A licensed psychiatric technician, Flynn worked the phones and needled the bureaucracy for months until Lucas finally was officially dubbed disabled.
With that declaration, he was eligible for MediCal. Then the search began for a doctor who would accept him.
Finally, Dr. Kenneth Fryer replaced Lucas’ right hip last December. In June, Lucas got a new left hip — operations that each cost about $35,000, with MediCal paying Fryer only about 20 percent of his usual charge.
During a check-upon Sept.13, “The doctor told me to get up and walk around,” Lucas said. “I did. He said,’well you’re on your own. You can get rid of these.’”
After eight years of depending on crutches, Lucas chucked them.
“It was fantastic,” he said. “I’ve been dancing already.”
“Everything sort of came together at the same time,” Flynn said, “ after a year of nothing coming together.
“Dr. Fryer came through. Gary (Cavalier) played a big part, too.”
Cavalier works at the Economic Opportunity Commission’s homeless shelter and, for the last two years, has shared his rented three bedroom home with five otherwise homeless men.
Flynn comes to the house every Thursday evening to lead a “rap group.” She recalled asking the men once if anyone planned to go to the Farmers’ Market that evening.
One of the residents, Cliff Weins, laughed. After living on the streets for 15 years, , he said, wandering up and down Higuera Street isn’t much of a treat.
“I’ve eaten outside under too many bridges,” he said.
Weins is now a dedicated homebody who does most of the cooking.
The five roommates are still clients of the Salvation Army’s homeless project.
Although they don’t require much attention right now, Flynn said, circumstances can change.
“And you know what, tomorrow it could be me” she said. “You never know if it’s going to be you that’s left behind.”
